1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns the manipulation of flat objects that have to be individually processed or checked.
These flat objects may be mail packets, for example. They have to be marked with a code indicating the complete address or part of the address that they carry, their destination in particular, so that they can subsequently be sorted automatically.
2. Description of the prior art
At manual coding stations the mail packets arrive stacked in baskets. An operator at each coding station takes the mail packets one by one from the basket, notes the information to be coded and enters this on a keyboard and then places the mail packets in a second basket in the order in which they are taken up. A processing circuit link between the keyboard and a label printing circuit makes it possible to print the marking codes onto a strip of labels with or without the complete address or to print a new address and its marking code in the case of a re-addressing operation.
Another operator takes the printed labels one by one and sticks them onto the mail packets stacked in their original order in the second basket. These mail packets can then be sorted automatically by a sorting machine.
The mail packets supplied to the operator at each manual coding station are generally pre-sorted according to their size.
Mail packets such as postcards, small and medium-size envelopes and the like, on the one hand, and mail packets such as larger envelopes and magazines, on the other hand, arrive stacked in separate baskets assigned to each of the two categories of mail packets. After input of information these mail packets are in a similar manner placed in separate second baskets assigned to the two categories of mail packets.
An object of the present invention is to assist the operator at this type of station in manipulating mail packets of other objects, to facilitate such manipulation and to enable it to be conducted at significantly higher speed.